the sword. Hence the expedition produced quite a crop of narratives and memoirs relating tolndia, such as those of Baeto, Diogṅetos, Nearchos, Onesikritos, Arisťoboulos, Kallisthe- nês, and others. These works are all lost, but their substance is to be found condensed in Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian. Subsequent to these writers were some others, who made considerable additions to the stock of information regarding India, among whom may be mentioned Dêimachos, who re- sided for a long time in Palibothra, whither he was sent on an embassy by Seleukos to Allitro- chadês, the successor of Sandrakottos; Patroklês, the admiral of Seleukos, who is called by Strabo the least mendacious of all writers concerning India; Timosthenes, admiral of the fleet of Ptolemaios Philadelphos; and Megas- thenes, who being sent by Seleukos Nikator on an embassy to Sandrakottos (Chandragupta),† the king of the Prasii, whose capital was Palibothra (Pataliputra, now Patna), wrote a work on India of such acknowledged worth that it formed the prin- cipal source whence succeeding writers drew their accounts of the country. This work, which appears
† The discovery that the Sandrokottos of the Greeks
was identical with the Chandragupta who figures in the
Sanskrit annals and the Sanskrit drama was one of great
moment, as it was the means of connecting Greek with
Sanskrit literature, and of thereby supplying for the first
time a date to early Indian history, which had not a single
chronological landmark of its own. Diodôros distorts the
name into Xandrames, and this again is distorted by Curtius
into Agrammes.
